|
The quirky things we skinners do... And a token of gratitude.
I find it strange that a lot of the most successful skins are designed with some quirky traits. The list below is not meant to insult or detract from the great work that this community has produced, but rather it's meant to be a little introspective into the design process and the associated processes that we go through in developing a skin.
The native resolution on most 15:9 touchscreens is 800x480, yet we design skins at 800x600 just to have the pixels get stretched and morphed back into 800x480. Granted that a lot of motherboard video processors don't like that resolution for some reason, it's usually not hard to change the resolution to the same as the native resolution. It just seems weird to me to stretch the skin just to have it stretched back.
We design in features that usually only get used once or twice in a blue moon, yet we spend hours upon hours over a hot monitor trying to tweak and test and tweak some more until we get it just right. Features like being able to change to a different font from within the skin. Most people will not need to do this on the fly, and it becomes a "set-it-and-forget-it" feature that is used the first time they open the skin, and never use it again. I'm even responsible for helping to implement the Custom font color changer to suit the different backgrounds yet for me personally, I keep the font at white, and usually don't change the background.
Spinning logos. Should I go into this one? A lot of users have spinning vehicle manufacturer logos. But really what is the purpose? You're not going to be looking at it while you drive, it's novelty is quickly lost, and most passengers are amazed at the simple fact there's a computer in your dash. To me it's wasted space that would be better used for GPS speedos and clocks, album art, etc.
After saying that though, I would like to personally thank a few skinners out there that have inspired us all to create ever-evolving skins that push the envelope of what a CarPC is capable of. I figure it's never a bad time to thank those that have helped along the way.
JohnWPB and DFX,
LiquidSmoke and LSXVOID, (what a beautiful and intuitive skin.)
Enforcer and all his plug-ins and iDrive,
blk02si and everyone working on the Carwings skin,
Blue ZX3 and his work with the skin-editor, without his help we wouldn't be able to make these skins as easily as we can now.
CdRsKuLL and Freedrive, freedom ultimate,
GF-ler and his work with the iPhone skins,
ThunderStick for maintaining a place to find all the skins out there,
Sal R. for his MMI skins,
Sonicxtacy02 for his skins and plug-ins,
Dalailama for Crystal Blue - One of the most visually stunning designs yet,
And of course a big thanks to guino, without his work, none of us would have this amazing front end... that we get to use FOR FREE! (go make a donation on his website though to show your support)
Anyone else out there looking to get into skinning, welcome. There are plenty of members here to help give suggestions and provide answers to questions you might have. We are all excited to see what will be thought of next.
If you want to thank someone for their contribution to this forum, please post a reply to this thread and show them that they are appreciated.
|
Linear Mode
